The Dunbar Repertory production of BLACK NATIVITY returns to the Count Basie Theatre on Friday.

In an interview that appeared here a little over a year ago, Brookdale Community College faculty member Darrell Lawrence Willis Sr. told the redbankgreen Drama Desk that “no matter what I’ve been working on, whether it was the works of August Wilson or the Juneteenth festival, the number one thing that people ask me about is Black Nativity.”

“They’d tell me ‘the show has been such a blessing to us,’ and they all want to know when we’re doing it again.”

On December 30, 2010  following a hiatus of some six years  the stage director and founder of Monmouth County based Dunbar Repertory Company revived his popular production of the theatrical presentation that combines the Gospel of St. Luke with the poetry of the late Langston Hughes and a custom-collected set of folk spirituals and hymns, bringing it to the boards of the Count Basie Theatre for the first time.

It’s a holiday offering that was designed to take its place among the scores of concerts, plays, ballets and benefits that have staked a traditional spot on the Count’s schedule each December  even if, for a moment there, it looked to be a Christmas miracle that was in danger of not coming to pass.

 Detective Daniel Sullivan arrested Brian Miller, age 21, from Walnut Avenue in Red Bank, NJ [EDITOR’S NOTE: This address, while in the 07701 Red Bank zip code, is actually in Middletown], for numerous counts of Theft by Deception as a result of a two month joint investigation conducted by the Middletown Police Department and the Trenton Office of the United States Secret Service into counterfeit twenty dollar bills that had been passed to numerous businesses throughout the area.

Police say Miller had passed the phony bills to businesses in Middletown, Holmdel, Atlantic Highlands, Fair Haven and Keansburg and had been charged by the police departments in those towns as well. He was released pending a court date.

A Shrewsbury man was taken to a hospital early Friday afternoon after a mason’s dumptruck fell on him while he was working underneath it, Little Silver police Chief Dan Shaffery tells redbankgreen.

Glenn Weisman, was apparently working on the truck in the yard of his landscaping business at 62 Birch Avenue in Little Silver when a wood block that was used in jacking up the vehicle slipped at around 12:12 p.m., causing the truck to pin him, Shaffery said.

Here’s a video that tracks a couple of Red Bank kids as they explore Yestercades, the retro gaming emporium that’s been the buzz of Broad Street since even before it opened in October.

Niko Porter, a fourth-grader at the Red Bank Middle School, and Patricio Vera, a senior at Red Bank Regional, took a whirlwind tour of the arcade, which features such classics as Pac Man, Frogger, Space Invaders and Tetris.

Niko, by the way, no longer sports that awesome mop of hair. He recently donated it to be made into a wig for a cancer patient.

Red Bank officials are mulling a ceremonial renaming of a portion of Shrewsbury Avenue in honor of grocer Ralph ‘Johnny Jazz’ Gatta, who died last Saturday at age 74.

Gatta, a lifelong Red Banker, died at Barnabas Health Hospice at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch. He was buried Wednesday at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Middletown.

A butcher who infused bebop, played loud, into his every working hour over nearly five decades behind the counter at Johnny’s Jazz Market, Gatta served as a living encyclopedia of jazz arcana among the boxes of cereal and detergent in his store.

He was also, he was fond of telling visitors, a front-row witness to the West Side’s transition from a neighborhood dominated by African-Americans and immigrant Italians to one with a Spanish accent  changes he heartily embraced.

Kristopher Parker and Robert Womble at borough hall Wednesday night. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Kristopher Parker was dropping off his grandmother at the Evergreen Terrace apartments in Red Bank when he saw the smoke from the tiny house set way back off the street and ran toward it.

Robert Womble had just finished an early supper with his grandmother at the same complex when neighbors began screaming that there was a fire next door. Out the door and over a tall chainlink fence he went.

Both men, who did not know each other, converged on the back porch of the burning house, alerted to the possibility  the awful near certainty, in fact  that an elderly woman was inside.

“These men never hesitated, they just reacted,” said Red Bank borough Administrator and Fire Marshal Stanley Sickels. “They did what trained people hesitate to do, and they did it without helmets, without protective gear.”

What they did on September 18 was to kick in the back door, which was blocked by piles of junk, and make their way through black smoke toward to the desperate voice of Phyllis Rudrow, crawling part of the way, even as Parker communicated with a 911 dispatcher via a Bluetooth cellphone device in one ear.

Fulfilling a pledge made by Mayor Pasquale Menna two years back, the borough council awarded a contract for a yet-to-be-determined number of pay stations that will, among other wonders, send visitors texts when they’re in danger of being ticketed and allow them to extend their stays from the comfort of a restaurant.

Oh, and for the town? A sweet spike in parking revenue, with an accompanying drop in enforcement and maintenance costs, says an executive at vendor Integrated Technical Systems of Wallingford, Connecticut.

They are: above, first prize, 80 West Westside Avenue, the home of Imogene Malloy; below, second prize, 60 Leighton Avenue, home of Chris and Jane Hussey; and, at right, third prize, 70 Peters Place, home of Darren Midura.

Winners received gift certificates to SuperFoodtown, free tax work from H&R Block, and maple syrup from Prown’s Home Improvements. (Click to enlarge)

 Michael Dahlquist, age 38, from David Terrace in Red Bank, NJ, arrested on December 13, 2011 by Patrolman Charles Higgins for Criminal Mischief. He was released pending a court date.

 Kimberly Rieger, age 20, from Prospect Avenue in Middletown, NJ, arrested by Corporal Keith MacDonald on a Contempt of Court warrant issued by the Middletown Municipal Court. She was held on $2,500.00 bail.

A minivan ended up on its side and at least one person had to be mechanically extricated after an accident on Newman Springs Road near Henry Street in Shrewsbury around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.

An official account of events was not immediately available, but the vehicle appeared to have struck a fire hydrant, which was knocked off a concrete pad despite being surrounded by steel columns. (Click to enlarge)

[Update, 11 a.m, December 21: Red Bank police say they have a report of an accident at 5:12 a.m, but that it was handled by Shrewsbury PD. But Shrewsbury Police Chief John Wilson III says his department has no record of the accident.]
[Update to the update, 1:21 p.m.: Sergeant Michael Gallagher of the Shrewsbury PD tells redbankgreen that because of miscommunication, we were mistakenly informed that there was no record of this accident. In fact, he says, the Shrewsbury PD did respond and found a single-vehicle accident in which a 90-year-old Tinton Falls man was briefly trapped in his minivan, which had rolled after he swerved to avoid an animal in the road and struck the fire hydrant. The victim, whose identity was not immediately given, was extricated by Shrewsbury fire volunteers and transported to Riverview Medical Center with “very minor injuries,” Gallagher said. No charges were filed and the matter is under investigation, he said.]

The River Road station will be boarded up until Sunoco can find another tenant, says the departing gasoline dealer. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

After 20 years, Rich Bercaw has pulled down the bay doors for the last time at his Sunoco gasoline and service station on River Road in Fair Haven.

Unable to keep up with steep rent and what he described as steadily dropping demand for both fuel and repairs, Bercaw pink-slipped five employees and shut off the lights last Thursday, he tells redbankgreen.

“Sunoco will come in and board it up until they find someone to rent it,” he said, as he loaded equipment into a pickup truck Tuesday. And with a deeply discounted first-year’s rent, “eventually, they’ll get someone,” he said.

Line drawings of distinctive structures by Terry McCue, below, are on display at Red Bank’s borough hall. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Here’s a stocking-stuffer idea that’s as local as they come.

A series of note cards by Red Bank artist Terry McCue honors the borough’s history by preserving, in pen-and-ink, some of its most noteworthy buildings.

And the proceeds from the sale of the cards go to support an institution that occupies one of those structures: the Red Bank Public Library, which makes its home in the former Sigmund Eisner mansion on West Front Street.

Planning board testimony about a proposed 72-room hotel at the foot of Cooper Bridge in Red Bank was put off until mid-January Monday night after a lawyer for an objector raised a question about the structure’s height.

Darlene Love, the original “Christmas Baby,” joins the great Ben E. King at the Basie in a show entitled LOVE FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

It’s almost universally regarded as the greatest Christmas album of all time  a multigenerational favorite that’s lost none of its power and appeal, even as the Bad Santa who brought us A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector serves a 19-to-life sentence for second-degree murder (a fact apparently known to all but the author of his official bio).

If anyone has worked overtime to rescue and reclaim the legacy of that glorious Wall of Sound, however, it’s Darlene Love  the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and Spector studio session stalwart who was featured most prominently on the 1963 LP’s original cover (released, as lousy luck would have it, on the day of JFK’s assassination).

On Wednesday, Love returns to the Count Basie Theatre for the first time since 2009 in Love for the Holidays, a concert that teams her with another great voice from one of pop music’s most fertile eras, Ben E King.

John Oakley of Fantastic Signs removes Butterfly Fine Art’s name from the future home of the Glam Bar, a blowout-only hair salon. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Coming soon to Red Bank, for women on the go with hair issues: a blowout bar.

No cuts, no dyes  just blowouts.

Well, plus changing rooms, for those rushing off to weddings and other events. And a few dresses and accessories, for those in need of just the right finishing touches. And, of course, makeup artists. And beverages.

It was silly Saturday in Red Bank, as roving bands of Santas and Cousin Eddies did some major barhopping for charity, hitting just about every watering hole in town and shaking their pails for contributions.